Ep.52 How To Build a Business On Social Media: Posting, Scaling + Hiring

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0:40What is up guys and welcome back to Working Hard Hardly Working. Today is another solo episode and we are talking about how to grow a business on social media. Lots of questions came up on this, generally do whenever I do a Q &A. I hate also saying that because it sounds like so many people are asking me this all the time. Then sometimes people ask me some things about how to grow a business on social media. So today we're generally just going to be talking about social media in general, how to be using it for your business, how to be growing more of a presence. Like I think when I actually started on social media, it was such like a taboo subject to be like how to grow on social media because it was seen as like you shouldn't want to grow on social media.

1:17I think we're all very aware of the fact that if you have a business or if you have a product or if you want to be a content creator or influencer or whatever it might be, social media is going to be a hugely valuable tool and that's not necessarily something to be ashamed about. I think that back in the day it definitely was more of a taboo subject and now like fucking hell every time I go onto my explore page it's literally like five reels you should be posting every day which is not going to be what this episode is going to be about but we're going to be answering some dilemmas. This for me takes me right back.

1:48My career actually started completely on social media. I started posting originally just like when I was trying to get into fitness and basically just using it as like like I didn't even show my face until I had 10 ,000 followers. It was under a fake name and everything. Since then, my career, I guess, has gone through many different forms and that has been hugely facilitated by social media, which I think is such a valuable tool and I don't think anyone can deny is a hugely valuable tool. And then also my day-to-day work, where the majority of the time I am in the office for Tala and Shreddy.

2:24You know, social media is such an important part of strategy when growing a brand and a business. It's what we see as what's called organic marketing. So building up an audience for your brand specifically and marketing to that organic audience. Also on social media, we talk about paid, which is, you know, putting money behind that type of content. We're going to be talking less about that today, but I do believe I have a dilemma on that one. Essentially, we're just going to be talking today about how to build a social media presence, how to grow a following whether it is for your brand for yourself for a cause whatever it might be I'm completely unashamed of that you know when I grew my social media it was so strategic at the beginning it was very accidental it started growing at the beginning and I was kind of like oh my god what is this but when I realized that it was going to be something that was going to be part of my career I absolutely took it extremely strategically when I was on YouTube I was posting three times a week, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, 5pm on Instagram.

3:24I was posting like multiple dimes a day back in the day. I don't know if that's what you should be doing now. Personally, I don't focus on growth on Instagram anymore and haven't for about four years, but there is no doubting the fact that it is a hugely, hugely valuable tool. And I think that you don't need to want to grow on social media at all. But when running a business, you can get huge multiplier effects for much cheaper acquisition costs than you can in a lot of other marketing channels. So I do think that is a hugely important thing to be talking about and to know how to ace. So I've got some fun facts for today, as always, to set the scene on our topic.

4:00The average internet user has 8.6 social media accounts. What the fuck? That is, oh, okay. No, for some reason, And I was thinking like eight Instagram accounts. And I was like, oh my God, stalking your ex has gone out of control. I, okay, I've completely misunderstood that. Don't come to me for data reading. Clearly, I am not a data analyst. That sent me, I really was very, very confused at that statistic. As of the third quarter of 2020, 10 million brands are advertising on Facebook. 73 % of marketers believe their social media marketing efforts have been somewhat effective or very effective for their business.

4:44I think we can all agree that completely dependent on the brand, of course, but I would say especially product brands, but also you can't go anywhere on social media without seeing service brands, like especially like coaching stuff advertised everywhere, but also like all sorts of different agencies, et cetera, et cetera. Like social media has become people's way of having a website. Like you wouldn't have a website necessarily for everything you did back in the day, whereas like everyone has a social media now. So it's almost like the way you are presented. Like I stalk new candidates, like applicants on social media, like businesses I'm going to work with, potential agencies I'm working with.

5:25Like there's no doubt that your social media does very much set you up for how you represent yourself in the world. B2B marketers ranked social advertising second in success behind paid search for producing content marketing results. Interesting. So yeah, I do think there is this expectation and kind of misconception that social media is the be all and end all when it comes to like sales, which is absolutely not the case. I think some of the biggest businesses, if you went on their social media, still, they don't have the biggest followings. And yet they are making, you know, an amazing amount of sales, billions and billions a year.

6:00So I do think that's worth noting that you don't need to have a big social media to have a successful business. It's a very useful tool to use to be able to amplify yourself, present yourself well, create low acquisition cost marketing based on the fact that, you know, you're speaking to an organic audience and therefore an audience that's already predisposed to shop from you. But I do think that there's a kind of misconception that like you have to have a big social media to make a lot of sales. I promise you there is not a direct correlation. If you look at two brands and they have vastly different social media followings, they could be making the exact same amount of sales.

6:32Same with two brands who have the same social media followings. they could be making vastly different amounts of sales. You absolutely, if you're running a business of some form, I wouldn't entirely rely on social media at all. Diversifying is very, very, very, very, very, very, very important. But anyway, we're talking about social media today, so I don't know why I'm banging on about that. So first dilemma, growing your social media presence. Hi Grace, how have you used social media to grow your businesses? I own a small jewellery business and know I probably need to start having a social media presence to promote it.

7:01What do you suggest I do to start growing my business online. The main message I always try to get across is like, tell them something, don't sell them something. There's so much content that your customer would like to see that's not directly based on you being like, buy this, buy this, buy this. Like, you definitely shouldn't constantly be like hard calling to action to your customer on social media. Otherwise people will just get exhausted. You definitely shouldn't be looking at organic marketing just in order to blatantly sell your product. I think you need different tiers of like how hard the sell is and you need to make sure that the majority of your content isn't actually that hard sell content.

7:39Knowing what you're using different platforms for in terms of your strategy is really important. So personally, I would say TikTok for pure exposure. So getting out to the most people possible because their algorithm is basically made in the way that it works like an ad, like it's pushing your stuff out to look like audiences. Instagram, I'd use it to cultivate a genuine audience. So really have like Instagram as the home that everything else is like directing towards. So you can have longer form content on YouTube. You could have shorts on YouTube. You could have TikToks that are purely stories telling stuff about you, the business, like styling, all of that is aimed to get as many people as possible.

8:16And then you could have Instagram, which has like the home of all your different stuff. It has Instagram shop on there, et cetera, et cetera, and almost access your website that you should obviously have a website as well. Dilemma two. Hi, Grace. I'm currently working full-time in real estate, which I do really enjoy. And I'm trying to keep up a social media presence. How do you keep up with it all? By the time I've made content and responded to comments, my whole day is gone. I don't think I have a good work-life balance because the line is getting blurred between my passion in social media and it's now becoming a really extensive hobby alongside my full-time job.

8:44Any advice on managing workload when it comes to social media? One of the tough things about social media, you expect to be like everyone you follow who is full-time on there so what I mean by that is that like if you like the gym and you follow fitness influencers you expect to be able to be like as fit as that person as lifting as much as that person going to the gym as much as that person when that's their full-time job first things first you need to get comfortable with the fact that as long as you have a full-time job you are not going to be doing social media as if it is your full-time job and I think you need to be able to set boundaries for yourself in order to be able to to create that space and like more of that work-life balance.

9:23So for example, when I started out in social media, I was working five days a week, longer than nine to five. I was going to the gym at 5am and then I would do the work day. And then on the weekends, I'd literally spend like 10 hours a day making recipes to be able to post on social media like the next week. And there weren't really like many quote unquote influences at the time, but I remember being so exhausted but also being like this is the only way I can grow so I completely understand where you are coming from with this you're never going to be as good as an influencer who is paid to be full-time doing that exact thing while you're full-time on something else okay on to the next one paid and organic media oh well hello she's ready hello grace new marketing assistant here in my first role my dilemma is actually just a curious question what's the difference between paid and organic social media.

10:14I've heard everyone talking about it at work and would love to actually know what it means. Very fair enough. People think of organic and paid media so separately. And I think this is because in the past you would have like paid media, which would be like a billboard or like in a magazine or whatever it might be. And then you'd have organic in the way that social media started in that it's literally just like posting on social media. In reality, some of the most effective paid marketing spend you can do now is to lookalike audiences to what your current social media is like so for Tala it will be pushing out to people who look similar to our following in terms of like their age their demographic where they're from what their interests are the type of people they follow etc etc I think that it's easy to think that you need if you're pushing something out like that it needs to be like an infographic of some form or it needs to kind of look like a billboard, realistically, some of the content that's going to perform best on paid spend is going to be the content that naturally performs well to your existing audience on organic because your audience likes it and therefore the lookalike audience is going to like it.

11:21So if you are someone wanting to get into more paid spend and you've got a business and you post on social media, I would trial your first few paid spend posts as your best performing organic posts. Okay. Hi, Grace. Do you have any advice on when you should outsource? I think I've progressed my business to the point where I can take it, but I know it might be easier if I hire a social media manager or outsource to freelancers. What's your opinion on whether I should start growing further than just myself? So I always say that when you're in a business and you're realizing you probably need to make your first hire, start making it as soon as possible.

11:56I think it's really easy to hold off for a while because you could think you can deal with it but ultimately if you're scaling it's always going to grow in that way and therefore you're better off hiring sooner rather than later what you want from this person is probably going to change over the course of the hiring process so I'd start to put out like the application process pretty soon I would also say that early on it's generally best to mitigate your weaknesses because you're going to start being able to concentrate on your strengths and I always believe in strengthening your strengths obviously mitigate your weaknesses but you're always going to get the most out of strengthening your strengths rather than just trying to get better at your weaknesses I would also though say that one of the easiest first hires and what I did was essentially getting like a quote-unquote mini me so someone who just does like a little bit of everything and they're just helping you here there and everywhere because you just need more capacity and kind of go from there right so that is all we have time for today I hope you enjoyed this episode on growing your business on social media.

12:57I feel like there are so many episodes we could do on social media. So let me know if there are any specific topics you'd like to hear about or talk about or ask dilemmas about. And as always, it would be my pleasure to answer them. And if not, we will have to fake the dilemmas, which would be a real shame, but you'll still be hearing from me. Okay. Thank you. Have a good day. Bye.

13:24You